The Little Ones

The Loom
By Carl Zimmer
Jul 2, 2004 8:22 PMNov 5, 2019 10:38 AM
evolve.jpg

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In 1970, the natural history illustrator Rudolph Zallinger painted a picture of human evolution called "The March of Progress" in which a parade of hominids walked along from left to right, evolving from knuckle-walking ape to tall, spear-carrying Cro-Magnon. The picture is etched in our collective consciousness, making it possible for cartoonists to draw pictures like the one here safe in the knowledge that we'll all get the joke. I had actually wanted to show Zallinger's own picture, but, like others before me, I failed to find it on the web. I was inspired to hunt down the picture by the news today of the discovery of a strange new fossil of a hominid--an extinct relative of humans--that lived 900,000 years ago.

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